Flight Delayed
by Vampire-Badger
Summary: AU. When Ajay Ghale is two years old, his father almost kills his half-sister. Almost. Twenty five years later, the siblings meet again. Well... almost.
1. Chapter 1

Ajay can't fly directly to Kyrat. There's no flights going there from America, so his travel plans are all sort of jumbled up and confused. He'll have to change flights three times just to get _close_ to the country, and then he's found a place where he can take a bus into Kyrat itself. After that… well, after that, he has no idea what he's going to do. Figure out where Lakshama is, probably. Then turn around and get out of the country as quickly as possible, before he gets shot or blown up or something. Ajay keeps trying not to think about it, but it's hard to ignore how badly messed up the country is. He's found confusing reports of some kind of civil war, but the details are pretty sorely lacking. Ajay has no idea what he's running into.

So in a way, he's almost glad to hear his first flight is delayed. Weather. So here he is, just over an hour's drive from his shitty apartment, watching the departure board and hugging his mother's urn to his chest like a security blanket. He keeps thinking that it's not too late. He could still just turn around and go home. Stay out of some stupid civil war that has nothing to do with him.

Every flight out has been delayed, and the gates are slowly filling up with people impatiently waiting for the storm to clear. Ajay had snagged a chair early on, but given it up when a rowdy family of six sat down next to him. He's just not in the mood for their happy chatter, or the way the three oldest children keep jumping around, whining for attention.

The youngest just sits on his mother's lap, watching the storm outside through wide, terrified eyes while she hugs him tight.

Ajay finds a new place to sit, leaning against a wall with his back to that big, happy family. He pulls off his bag to use as a makeshift pillow, and wedges his mother's urn against his knees. It's hard to believe that this is all that's left of her.

"Are you planning to take up _all_ the space on the floor, or is there room down there for one more?"

Ajay jumps and almost drops his mother's urn. "Uh…" He looks up, and there's a woman about his age standing there, giving him a smile that would be borderline flirtatious on anyone else's face. But there's something about her face that just looks so weirdly similar to Ajay's mother that he can't let himself be charmed. "Yea," he says, turning away from her. "Sure."

" _Packed_ in here," she says. She's loud the way some people get when they're used to being listened to. "I hope they start letting flights take off soon."

Ajay grunts.

"Barrel of sunshine, you are," she mutters. "I was just making conversation."

"I'm going to the country where my mom was born to scatter her ashes," Ajay says. That's usually enough to get people to stop prying. "So I'm not really in a sunshine mood."

"Sucks," the girl says. She shows no sign that she plans to stop prying. "Where was she born?"

"You've never heard of it," Ajay says.

"I've heard of lots of places."

" _No one's_ ever heard of it."

"Try me."

Ajay sighs. "It's called Kyrat," he says.

"What! Really?"

Ajay has been determinedly not looking at her since she sat down, thinking that maybe she'll eventually get the hint and stop talking to him. But she sounds so suddenly enthusiastic that Ajay looks at her now. Really looks.

There's a distinctly tailored look to her. Perfect clothes. Perfect face. Perfect hair. Ajay's tempted to compare her to a Barbie doll. But there's something about the way she smiles at the mention of Kyrat that makes her look more _real_.

"What a marvelous coincidence," she says.

"Coincidence?"

"I just came from Kyrat," she says. "I grew up there—it's my home."

Ajay half laughs. "Well that's not what people usually say when I tell them I'm going there."

"What do they usually say?"

"Usually they say 'wait, where?' because they've never heard of it," Ajay says. "But sometimes they ask me if I'm suicidal or something, so…you know. That's nice."

"It's not that bad," she says dismissively.

"Isn't there a civil war, or something—"

"Well, sure. But I have a good feeling about you. You'll be fine."

"Hmm."

The two of them are silent for a while. Eventually, Ajay decides it might be polite to continue the conversation. "So what about you?" he asks. "Why are you traveling?"

"Hoping to find my mother, actually," she says. "I know she's living in America…" she makes a vague, unhappy noise. "Somewhere. With my half-brother. But, um… my family's kind of a mess."

Ajay is surprisingly eager for the chance to hear about someone else's problems for once. "Care to share?"

She sighs. "It's not a fun story."

He makes generic, encouraging noises, and she gives in almost at once. "My parents weren't married when they had me," she says, and gives him a sharp look like she's expecting some sort of comment. Ajay stays quiet. "My mother was actually married to someone else."

"Ah."

"Yes." Her voice is tight. "Her husband found out when I was a year old. Very nearly killed me. Nobody knows exactly what happened—I certainly don't. But my mother's husband was killed. My mother left for America with my brother. And I stayed in Kyrat with my father."

"So what happened?" Ajay asks. "Why come looking for her all of a sudden?"

"It was just time," she says. Suddenly, they're both looking at the urn on Ajay's lap. "I don't want to wait too long and find out…" She's quiet for a second, then lets out a long, slow breath. Tries to cover up the awkward silence with a painfully awkward laugh. "Well," she says. "That's probably enough awkward oversharing." She points at the departures board, and Ajay sees that they're starting to let a few flights take off again. "And my connecting flight is taking off soon."

"Oh," Ajay says. His plane is still horrifically delayed. "Yea, sure. Nice meeting you."

She stands, brushes the dirt from the floor off her pants—and just like that, she's gone.

"Huh," Ajay says, and he goes back to staring moodily at his mother's urn.

-/-

It's a bit tiring, really, to always be correcting people on her name.

The flight attendant looks at her ticket, then her passport, and there's that familiar, brief look of panic as she tries to puzzle through the name there. She soldiers on bravely. "Welcome aboard," she says. "Miss… Lak…" She says it like _lake_.

"Lakshmana," she says. She tries to give her voice the kind of casual authority her father always has, but she's not him, and that's a lot to live up to. "Lakshmana Min."

"…yes," the flight attendant says. She scans Lakshmana's ticket, and waves her aboard (and away) as quickly as possible. Lakshmana takes her seat (first class), and settles in. Her stomach is all butterflies. She doesn't know where she's going. Doesn't know if her mother is still in America, or even if she's still alive.

But _if_ she's here, _if_ she's alive, Lakshmana is damn well going to _find_ her.

And maybe her brother, too.

 **-/-**

 **So... I don't even know what I'm doing in this fandom. I haven't touched FC4 for about six months, so... sorry if there's anything messed up in here! I tend to make mistakes.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Apparently this isn't a oneshot anymore (sorry)**

 **-/-**

"What the fuck are you doing here?"

Ajay doesn't know what the fuck he's doing here. He doesn't know where here is, actually, and he's not _super_ clear on who he is, right at this moment. There's only one thing that's actually one hundred percent sure of right now, and Ajay blurts it out before he can stop himself.

"I got shot," he informs his probably-a-hallucination.

His probably-a-hallucination, who looks weirdly similar to that woman he met at the airport back home (before he'd come to the hellhole that is Kyrat, and got sort of kidnapped by a dictator, and then sort of rescued by the Golden Path, and then definitely, one hundred percent shot), gives him a despairing look.

"Only a little," she says.

"Only a little!" Ajay repeats, completely gob smacked.

"It grazed you."

"I'm going to die of blood loss," Ajay announces.

"Oh, _please_ ," the woman says, and Ajay is so offended by this that he feels his senses start to return a little.

"I really did get shot," he insists.

"Yea, sure."

"I did!" Common sense starts to return, and he realizes with some surprise that his probably-a-hallucination isn't actually a hallucination at all. The woman from the airport is actually here, crouched over him in the falling apart shack he'd taken shelter in after getting shot (really). She's still dressed in her crisp, professional clothes, still amazingly clean, even crouched here in this filthy shack. Ajay's been in Kyrat a total of eighteen hours and he feels like he'll never be clean again. "What are you doing here?"

"Well I can leave if you'd prefer that."

"Come on," he says, and there's a sudden tension in his stomach when he realizes that she means it. He's not really worried about bleeding out anymore (now that he's sitting up and not so panicked, Ajay sees that his side where the bullet had brushed him is barely bleeding, and only a little painful to the touch). But he's worried about _something_ , and it takes a second or two of head swimming confusion to figure out why he hates the idea of her leaving so much.

This country is crazy, and violent, and Ajay has felt in over his head since the _second_ he crossed the border. This woman would have been at home on any American street. She's composed, professional, even calm. Best of all, Ajay can't spot a gun anywhere on her. He already feels naked without his, but he misses being unarmed. "What are you doing here?" he asks again.

"I told you I'm from Kyrat," she says. "I've just come home."

"But why _here_?" he insists. "In this shitty little shack, when you could have been anywhere else in the country? Why—"

"You're just full of questions, aren't you?"

He stares at her for a long second, before a slight twitch around her mouth betrays that she's joking. "You're _teasing_ me," he says.

"A little," the woman admits, and the twitch around her mouth blossoms into a full blown smile. "You're taking everything so seriously—it's hard not to poke a little bit of fun." She gestures dismissively at his _actual bullet wound,_ as if this is supposed to prove some kind of point. "But to answer your question, some moron with the Golden Path is running around the area and blowing up Dad's guards, so I thought it would be better to wait him out instead of putting myself at risk of getting blown up as well. This was the nearest shelter."

Ajay makes a vague, confused noise and tries to figure out which part of that sentence is the most alarming. At least she hasn't realized that he was the one doing the blowing up. But…

"Who's your dad?" he asks.

"Pagan Min," she says. "You've probably heard of him."

"Yea," Ajay says. He starts trying to inch away from her without being incredibly obvious about it. "We, uh… met."

She winces. "And he didn't make a very good impression, did he? He can be a little overwhelming until you get to know him better, but he's not all bad. Promise."

"He was torturing people," Ajay says.

Her smile is bitter, and Ajay is suddenly and unexpectedly _sad_ for her. "Welcome to Kyrat," she says.

Ajay has a vague idea that the two of them are supposed to be enemies. If Sabal or Amita were here, he's pretty sure they'd be telling him to stab her or shoot her or something. But Ajay is strangely reluctant to do so.

"Well," the woman says, shaking her head and walking to the door. "Sounds like the shooting's stopped. I should probably head home before it starts back up again."

"Wait!" Ajay blurts out, and she pauses in the doorway.

"Yes?"

"Did you find them?" Ajay asks. "Your mother and brother?"

"No," she says, after a short pause. The fingers of one hand curl around the doorframe, and Ajay sees her squeeze it tight, like she's holding on just for balance. "Not exactly. I found out my mother had died. Just a few weeks ago. And my brother just left after her funeral. I talked to every one of his friends and coworkers I could find, and no had any idea where he was. I decided to come back."

Ajay can understand that. After his own mother's death, he'd left for Kyrat without telling anyone either. "Sometimes that's what you have to do," he says. "Sometimes your life, it just… goes to shit, all at once. And you just need to get out of it as quickly as you can."

"Oh right," she says. "You lost your mother recently too, didn't you?"

"That's why I'm here," Ajay says, sort of half gesturing at where his mother's urn is safely nestled between his bag and the wall.

"Good luck with that," the woman says, and just like that she's gone.


	3. Chapter 3

Over the course of only a few weeks, Lakshmana watches everything she's ever known fall to pieces around her. Her whole life, the Golden Path has been terrorizing the country, threatening everything and everyone she loves. But until recently, her father's army has been strong enough to keep them at bay.

And then one man arrives, and just destroys everything. _Everything._

Lakshmana doesn't believe it the first time someone shows her a picture of the man that's destroyed so much of her home—this son of Mohan. She thinks her eyes are playing tricks on her, because there's no way the sad, awkward man she met on the floor of a New York airport could be the same man that is so thoroughly destroying her life. Lakshmana thinks of his panic when he'd just been _barely_ shot, and she can't understand how he could go around killing everyone he comes across.

And then they meet for a third time.

Lakshmana is in the middle of packing. Her father has told her to leave. He knows that the son of Mohan is coming, inevitably for him, and while he stubbornly (maybe stupidly) refuses to leave himself, he insists Lakshmana needs to get out of the country as quickly as humanly possible.

She's almost done filling a suitcase when she hears arguing from downstairs, and she recognizes her father's voice and _his_ , and goes running toward them before she can stop herself. Lakshmana's heartbeat thunders in her ears, and she is well and truly terrified.

But no one is dead when she comes running into the room, and somehow, her arrival seems to help.

"You?" the son of Mohan demands, looking up to stare at Lakshmana. Her stomach flips over when she sees that he's still pointing a gun at her father. He has an iron grip on the gun, and even though he seems surprised to see Lakshmana here, the gun does not waver at all. "What are _you_ doing here?"

"I live here," Lakshmana says, before she can stop herself. He seems so different from the boy she's met twice before. Lakshmana has seen plenty of killers, growing up in Kyrat, and there is no doubt in her mind that he has become one.

"Lakshmana," her father says. His voice is, for once, utterly serious. Quiet and calm. _"Go_."

She should. But her legs feel like jelly, and she's suddenly afraid. This idiot might actually kill her father.

"You _live_ here." His voice is cold and almost empty, but Lakshmana thinks she hears surprise there—and under the surprise, just a hint of betrayal. His eyes (tired and sad and older than they had been a few weeks ago) flick from Lakshmana to her father, then back again. "You're family," he accuses, and he grips his gun more tightly.

Lakshmana bristles, and—gun or no gun—she's half a breath away from tearing him a new one (that's her father, and no matter what terrible things people might say about him, she's never going to stop protecting him).

Then her father says, "Yes." And then he adds, "Yours."

The gun lowers, just a fraction. "Wait…"

" _What_?" Lakshmana breathes.

Her father doesn't look at either of them. "You share a mother," he says, and if he hadn't spoken in that terrifyingly quiet way (she's never _heard_ him so calm, so defeated—Lakshmana wants to scream at him to snap out of it, to stop scaring her like this), she doesn't think she would have believed him.

"You never told me," she says, and her voice shakes a little. She knows the name of her mother and her half-brother, she knows they'd fled to America. She'd never have thought… never have _dreamed_ … She should have known more about both of them.

"What's your name?" she demands of the man that is, apparently, her brother.

He's still holding the gun, but his grip is loose and almost uncaring. "Ajay," he says, and he says it the way an American would, not like a Kyrati, not like Lakshmana has said it to herself, every night since she was a little girl, lying awake and wondering about her far away family.

"Who are _you_?" he asks.

"Lakshmana," she tells him.

He flinches back as if struck, and drops the gun from numb fingers. It clatters away, impossibly loud on the tiles between him and Lakshmana's father. "You were what she wanted," he says.

"What?"

"All this time—I could have… I didn't have to come _here_."

Silence follows, _utter_ silence, but suddenly anger surges up through that silence, into Lakshmana. "I wish you hadn't!" she shouts at Ajay. Her voice echoes in the room, louder than the gun had been. "I wish you'd never come!"

He shakes his head—and takes off running, away, out of the room.

Gone.

Lakshmana goes to her father, and melts like jelly into his arms.

-/-

Ajay doesn't start thinking straight until he's far away from Pagan, and Lakshmana, and everything they represent. He comes to a radio tower and climbs it, and then for ages and ages and ages he just lies on the gently swaying platform and cries.

When he first came to Kyrat, he would have been devastated to learn he was connected, however distantly, to a tyrant capable of the things he'd seen Pagan Min do. Now he knows he's capable of horrible things himself, and somehow that particular revelation doesn't sting the way he should.

The only thought in his head is that _he didn't have to come here_. If he'd known her, if he'd known Lakshmana when he first met her at the airport, he could have passed along his ( _their_ ) mother's ashes. His job would have been over, he could have gone back to his life, and never known these terrible things about himself.

Ajay keeps thinking about everything that's happened to him since coming here. Everything he's done. An unending loop of terrible memories plays over and over in his head, tearing him apart as effectively as any injury he's ever suffered.

He remembers the killings. Pagan's shoulders, dead at his hands, or the hands of people around him. Golden Path fighters, dead at his side. The helpless, unhappy citizens of Kyrat, caught between both sides, threatened by the soldiers, by the Golden Path, by wild animals. He remembers the drugs, remembers dirty needles filled with who _knows_ what, remembers long, trippy days that don't make any sense but are so much better than reality. He remembers the fear, never knowing where the next threat will come from or what it will take from him.

(He remembers the first time he'd been shot. Barely shot, he realizes that now. But he'd been so scared, so _terrified_ —he'd felt the fear rise up in him, he'd tasted it, like acid on his tongue. And then, like some kind of apparition, she'd just… shown up. Someone he'd met back home, no matter how briefly, and she'd made him forget the fear, for a while).

Ajay spends the rest of the day up there on the radio tower. He spends most of the night there. Just before dawn, he climbs down and makes his careful, quiet way back in the direction he'd come from. He leaves his mother's ashes on the side of the road where he knows a guard will find it when they start their morning patrols—he knows their routes well enough by now. It's a longshot to hope the guard will think to take the urn back to his boss, but at this point it's the closest Ajay can get to fulfilling his mother's dying wish, and taking her back to Lakshmana.

He turns his back on her, and walks away. Time to find a way— _any_ way—out of the country. There are days when Ajay feels like this country has killed all the most important parts of him, like it's stolen away his very soul. But whatever tiny part of him that's left just wants to go _home_.


	4. Chapter 4

It's raining.

Ajay lies on his back on the grimy park bench, and watches the water rush down toward him. He wonders if he can drown himself in the rain. He wonders if he wants to. He wonders if anyone will care.

" _Ajay_ …"

He turns his head and squints against the downpour. Lakshmana stands a few feet away, frowning at him from under a dark umbrella. She shakes her head, and Ajay realizes she's disappointed in him because his mother used to look at him the exact same way, before she died.

Ajay doesn't even react. He's still suffering withdrawal from the mess of drugs he'd used in Kyrat to keep himself alive (and to numb the pain. And to forget, just for a while). This isn't the first time he's seen specters of his past rise out of the night to haunt him.

"It's funny," Lakshmana's ghost—is she a ghost if she's not dead? Her maybe-ghost—pushes Ajay's feet gently aside, and sits down at the edge of the bench. "I know your name now. I know your face. And it still took me a month and a half to find you."

"You're in my head," Ajay says without looking at her. "You must have a really shitty sense of direction if it took you that long to find me."

Lakshmana stands again; behind her disapproval, she seems worried. Ajay watches without reacting as she crouches down next to him, and reaches out to touch his face.

"You're burning up," she says. It's almost an accusation.

"I'm freezing," Ajay corrects.

She tugs at his elbow with surprising force for a hallucination, but Ajay is too tired to bother protesting. He walks without knowing where he's going for what feels like miles, following the gentle pressure against his arm. The rain stops, and it takes Ajay a long time to realize that's because he's inside. He blinks stupidly and looks around—he's standing in the lobby of a grand hotel (it seems grand to Ajay, anyway, who can't remember the last time he slept inside). It's too nice for the likes of him. Ajay turns around and leaves.

He blacks out somewhere between the lobby and the sidewalk. That happens these days. Fuck, but the drugs have done a real number on his brain. It might have really bothered him, except all this forgetting is easier than thinking about Kyrat.

When he comes back to himself, it's not raining.

No—he's inside again. He's warm, and there's an IV taped to his arm. Ajay doesn't know what's in it, but it must be good because Ajay feels more like himself than he has since… probably since his mother died.

Ajay sits up, slowly, because it makes his head spin, and looks around. He's in a decent hotel room that looks like it's been hastily converted into a kind of hospital room. In addition to the IV Ajay has already noticed, there's a half dozen machines of unknown purpose along the walls.

And, on the room's other bed, Lakshmana is curled up fast asleep. Ajay tries to get up, but his legs shake, and he resorts to throwing a pillow in Lakshmana's direction. She stirs, sits up, and stares at him. For a long moment they watch each other, brother and sister.

"My father is dead," Lakshmana announces, suddenly.

"I didn't kill him," Ajay says. He remembers that. Only… only, memory is a funny thing these days. "Did I?"

Lakshmana shakes her head. "Not directly," she says. "I mean… it was the Golden Path. They knew you'd gone to fight him, and then… you never came back. They thought father had killed you, and they…"

Silence.

"Revenge is a terrible thing," Lakshmana whispers.

"So… so that's not why you came to find me?" Ajay asks. "I mean… it's not revenge, is it? You're not here to kill me."

"No," Lakshmana says.

Silence. Again.

"I can't ever go back to Kyrat," Lakshmana says, and her voice breaks. "They'd kill me, and even if they didn't…" she closes her eyes. "I had to leave my father's body behind. I don't know what they did to him, I don't _want_ to know."

"But why come here?" Ajay asks.

"You're the only family I have left," Lakshmana says, and they barely know one another, but it strikes something in Ajay.

"I guess you're the only family I have, too," he says.

"Then I guess you're in a better position than I am," Lakshmana says.

"What?" Ajay frowns. "Why?"

"Well," she says. "You have me, but I only have you. And you're kind of a mess."

Ajay's startled into a laugh. There's not a lot of humor in it, but Lakshmana cracks a smile too.

He tries to move, but the IV pulls him back, and Ajay frowns as he runs the fingers of his other hand through the tube. He really is kind of a mess.

"Thank you," Ajay says, without looking up.

"You're not going to die all alone on a park bench," Lakshmana says. "I won't let you."

The quiet sadness in her voice makes Ajay look away from his IV, back up at her. She's hugging her knees, and her hair falls down in such a way that it almost completely hides her face. It hits Ajay then that he's supposed to be the older brother.

"I think Mom would be really happy to see us here like this," he says. "Or—maybe not exactly like this. But together. You were her last request, you know. She wanted me to bring her ashes to you."

"One of the guards found her urn, the day after you ran off," Lakshmana says. "He brought them to Father; he gave them to me."

"And what did you do with them?"

Lakshmana doesn't answer for a second. Ajay is terribly afraid that she's going to say she brought the urn with her.

"I grew up in that country," she says. "I brought her to my favorite place in Kyrat. I always went there to be alone. It was peaceful there. No fighting. No armies. I scattered her ashes there."

Ajay lets out a breath. "I'm tired of carrying her ashes around," he says. "They were …heavy."

"I understand," Lakshmana says.

"I think she would have liked to share that place with you," Ajay says. "Thank you."

She nods, then bites her lip. After several moments, she says, "Will you tell me about her?"

So Ajay does. He talks until his voice goes hoarse, and then Lakshmana moves a chair closer to his bed to hear him better. Ajay keeps talking until the room goes dark, and he has to reach over and turn on the light, and he sees that Lakshmana has fallen asleep in her chair. He studies her (his little sister) for a long minute.

"Goodnight," he whispers, quietly enough to keep from waking her. "I'll see you in the morning."

And he switches the light off again.


End file.
